Former Perry chief of staff to get more than $360,000 in salary/benefits to help modernize TxDOT (UPDATE)

Gov. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff will get more than $360,000 in salary and benefits from the Texas Department of Transportation to help modernize the 93-year-old agency, according to an interagency contract signed today.

Jay Kimbrough, a former Marine who earlier was Perry’s go-to guy to lead reforms at the Texas Youth Commission after an abuse scandal there, has been special adviser to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Kimbrough’s experience also includes being Perry’s homeland security director and deputy attorney general for criminal justice under Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Kimbrough’s salary of $303,338 and benefits totaling $58,787, including health insurance, are detailed in a $385,481 interagency contract between TxDOT and the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M. The contract ends Aug. 31, 2011.

TxDOT, which has 12,000 employees, has gone through rocky periods with lawmakers and members of the public. A report in 2008 by the Sunset Advisory Commission staff found concerns that TxDOT was “out of control” in the wake of controversy over planned public-private partnerships on toll roads and the now-fizzled Trans-Texas corridor transportation network and questions about financies.

The 2009 Legislature didn’t make changes but will look again at the agency next year. Transportation agency leaders in the meantime have looked to make changes and to strengthen their relationship with lawmakers.

Asked about Kimbrough’s salary, Lippincott said, “I think his experience speaks for itself. This is an agency that affects Texans every day – the air we breathe, the amount of time we spend stuck in traffic instead of at school, at work or with family and friends, and it provides the circulatory system for our economy.

“There’s a deep desire to modernize this agency. There is a culture here that is committed to excellence but is also committed to doing things the TxDOT way,” Lippincott said.

UPDATE: Kimbrough said by telephone that his base 12-month salary of $260,000 a year will be the same as it was for being special adviser to the A&M regents, noting that the TxDOT/Texas Transportation Institute contract is for 14 months. “I ain’t getting a raise,” Kimbrough said.

In a related move, however, the commission today named lawyer Howard Wolf as an adviser to help in the agency modernization effort. Wolff is a retired partner of Fulbright & Jaworski and a former member of the Sunset Advisory Commission, which oversees state government agencies that are up for review.

Wolf is acting chairman of Falcon Seaboard Co., a private investment corporation owned by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. When Dewhurst was previously elected land commissioner, Wolff served as head of his transition team.

Wolf is volunteering his services.

Lippincott said others are expected to join the modernization effort, whose work will build on audits and performance reviews including a recent audit by Grant Thornton that was budgeted for up to $2 million.